Barely two days after rumours began circulating about a big screen adaptation of Friends, rights holder Warner Bros has moved to quash speculation and said no such movie is in the works.

Talk of the project spread like wildfire through Hollywood after an unknown source claimed earlier in the week that Jennifer Aniston, Courtney Cox Arquette, Lisa Kudrow, David Schwimmer, Matthew Perry and Matt LeBlanc were prepared to reprise their roles as the sofa-bound pals.

However the studio's head of UK publicity Jayne Trotman today told the BBC the story was untrue. And further misery for fans of the long-running comedy came when publicists for both Cox Arquette and Perry denied the rumours.

Friends aired on television from 1994 to 2004 and has been the subject of numerous adaptation reports since the final episode famously drew an audience of 52.5 million in the US and 8.6 million in the UK.

Warner Bros scored a hit with its big screen version of Sex and the City when it opened four weeks ago and went on to sell more than $200m (£100.6m) in tickets around the world.